Born in
Chicago and raised in Bangkok, Lapcharoensap wrote the short story collection
“Sightseeing” and is an Eminent Writer in Residence in
the UW MFA Program in Creative Writing. Lapcharoensap
won a five-year European literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation
and a 2010 Whiting Writers Award for his work.

“Lapcharoensap
writes with a depth of emotion, of tenderness really, and fluent descriptive
detail,” said the Whiting judges. “We like the access he provides to a world we
know nothing about.”

Lapcharoensap will read from a new short story
published in this summer’s issue of Granta magazine, which named him a Best
Young American Novelist.

Raised on the Navajo Indian Reservation, poet and UW Eminent Writer in Residence, Bitsui attended
the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., and the University of
Arizona in Tucson. In a recent interview in “This Week from Indian Country
Today,” he explained his attraction to poetry.

“I
grew up in a traditional family, and I always knew that language is powerful,
that it can enact things, and change things and transform them. But, when I saw
contemporary forms of poetry, in books and anthologies, the way poets expressed
themselves was very familiar.”

Bitsui will read from his award-winning poetry collections,
“Flood Song” and “Shapeshift,” as well as new work from his forthcoming
collection.

The UW MFA Eminent Writer in Residence Program is
funded by the Excellence in Higher Education Endowment, created in 2006 by the
Wyoming Legislature. The Endowment brings acclaimed scholars, artists and
educators to Wyoming, and awarded funding to both the MFA Program in Creative
Writing and the UW American Indian Studies Program to support Bitsui’s
residency.

For more
information about the event, call Teton County Library at (307) 733-2164.